There is little doubt today that the smoking of tobacco, especially in cigarette form, is harmful to the health of the individual. Statistically significant evidence has been assembled over the past thirty years showing a direct correlation between smoking and lung cancer, smoking and coronary disease, and smoking and respiratory disease. Many smokers today only wish that their smoking habit could be broken, but somehow lack the will-power to permanently stay away from tobacco.
Actually smoking is addictive and involves both physical addiction and mental addiction. The physical addiction takes place because the smoker physically craves the nicotine contained in the tobacco. The mental addiction is stimulated principally by what occurs in the day-to-day life of the individual smoker. For instance, if others in the same environment smoke, social pressure may be put on said individual to smoke as well.
There are several products on the market used to discourage smokers from continuing the habit. Some of the products have achieved a limited measure of success, but as yet no one product has been really satisfactory to permanently discourage smoking in a large percentage of the smoking population. One such product on the market contains silver acetate in the form of a chewing gum. The product is effective because the silver acetate reacts with the nicotine in the tobacco to effect the mucous membranes of the mouth in such a way that when the tobacco comes into contact with the silver acetate, a nasty, disagreeable metallic taste is produced. Because of this disagreeable taste, smoking becomes less desirable and the smoker is discouraged into eliminating or at least into reducing the smoking habit.
One of the drawbacks to the use of the chewing gum containing the silver acetate is the fact that constant chewing must take place for a number of hours in order to achieve the desired effect. A smoker can simply throw out the chewing gum once the bad taste develops in his mouth and only minutes later "light up" once again. Furthermore in many business and social situations, chewing gum is not practical. Finally smokers who have dental work may not be able to use a chewing gum to break the smoking habit.